Keep Breathing
by Rather Fanciful
Summary: Sometimes it's just too much, and Dean needs a break.


Note: Slight language would be the only warning I can think of.

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><p>Another sip down, about a dozen left to go. It wasn't meant to be more than one beer, never past two, which was Dean's limit. Even on the nights he went out, when he and Sam stopped somewhere and he stumbled into a nearby bar to find a girl for the night. No sense in actually being drunk if looking it got him the attention he needed.<p>

The drinking restraint wasn't just about his father, and he would insist that John never was quite the drunk others would make him to be. Bobby knew that, but then, it seemed that Bobby always knew a lot more than he let on. Maybe that was where Dean got it from. Only ever give what is necessary to move on. Stow the rest away for when he's alone, and even then, repress it.

Tonight is the first that he's lost count of his drinks. There wasn't any particular significance of the day, or the hour or year. The moon was full, so he supposed that was good enough. Something to look at through the window as he drank. Swallowed down the emotion that had leapt from his gut and caught in his throat.

Dean's shirt is somewhere, ditched on the floor behind him where he left it after coming in earlier. The collar is stretched, probably ruined, but it couldn't be helped. It just felt too tight, too much all of a sudden, and it was one of his bigger shirts. Nothing had even happened when the anxiety started, nothing that he remembers, but his thinking wasn't all that straight anymore. Not with a nearly empty six pack on the floor, and red in his eyes that threatens to consume his vision.

The cheap, poorly hung curtains from the window are wound around one of his arms, the ends of it clenched in a fist as he absently pulls and wonders, when will it fall? How much is too much before it comes crashing down? The plaster that holds it up cracks, and Dean sighs, shaking his arm to free it. His other hand grasps the beer he has rested on his thigh. Bare feet pressed to the filthy hotel wall as he sits on the edge of the window he'd hastily opened upon coming into the room.

It was like he couldn't breathe all of a sudden. The pull in his chest, the pain just beneath his ribs, and the ache behind his eyes. All of it as familiar to him as Sam's voice. It's probably the one feeling Dean knows more intimately than any other, and that he hates more passionately than any demon. It's a combination of things, of events. Poorly chosen paths and all of the fucked up bullshit he's walked head first into without a second glance back.

All of that led him here. Nowhere special, just a hotel. Some random hour of the night. Sam's so deeply asleep that a fire alarm wouldn't wake him. The glass bottle Dean dropped an hour ago sure didn't. It's better that way, he can't be seen like this. Doesn't even want to be that way himself.

It would be easier if he could just relive the memories, to smile at the good times, and forget the bad like people told him to when they spotted the emptiness in his eyes. But the dreams- the nightmares, wouldn't allow that. Dean closes his eyes and sees blue and red, and nothing else. It's the blood spilled for him, and the eyes that wordlessly beg for an apology.

Dean has given up asking why. There's only one answer he can believe in, that won't torture him further than he already is.

One more long draw, a thick swallow, and he wavers on the window sill. He overcompensates when he tries for balance and ends up hitting his head on the wooden frame. His curse is mostly a growl, still quiet enough not to stir the hibernating snore-fest in the room behind him.

The air outside is cool, just enough to raise bumps on his arms, but it's easier to breathe, and that's all that matters. It keeps his beer cool, and the extra one he's opened but left to sit, untouched on the window sill next to him. Waiting.

It's not like _he_ drank beer, anyway.

Clumsy as he is in his drunken state, Dean doesn't spill a drop on the coat across his lap. It's the best he can do, stupid as it is for him to care about the damn thing's state. There was something about it that always amused him, and if he was honest, made him hopeful. After the coat was left, -the only thing remaining- the fabric had healed itself, like it had every other time its wearer was injured or involved in messy fights.

Every time, the angel would return with a clean coat, holes and slashes mended like they were never there, stains removed like it had been replaced altogether. But it was the same one; same belt, same thick buttons, same familiar, dusky scent. Down to the very last time, floating in the water like a waving flag of surrender, and it was unmarred, immaculate as it always did become when the day was won.

Dean wondered how, without _his_ influence, had it returned to its natural, complete state?

A snort. Dean didn't believe in magic, not anymore. Just evil, and demons, death. What was the use in bothering with the rest of it? Everything ended, everyone died. All Dean could do was delay the time until he did, one day at a time, and the same for his brother, too.

And maybe, one day, he'd have his answer for the mysteriously healed coat. The response to his unasked questions. The angel for his trench coat.

Until then, all he could do was keep breathing.


End file.
